Being at Stanford has been a great experience so far. And just as every r/Stanford thread has pointed to, the greatest part has been the people. However, I think that being around the people at Stanford is a challenge in and of itself.

For the first time in your life — unless you went to an incredibly prestigious high school — you’ll be pitted against some of the brightest, craziest, and talented minds in… well, the world. One person will have published research when they were 15; the other was an Olympic swimmer, and the other is able to ace a problem set and shotgun 5 beers the next day.

I think there’s something to be said about being in an environment like this. Of course, any institution that attracts lots of smart people will have its fair share of assholes, but even those that aren’t will still feel intimidating. Their ability to grasp concepts quickly, their capacity for seeing solutions in a matter of seconds, and the lax nature in which they do things can all place this implicit sense of pressure. I’ve always felt “average” — I came from an average town, went to an average high school, and accomplished things that were, well, quite average in comparison to most kids here. Nonetheless, I’ve become accustomed to being one of those students who was always at the top and would share in the spoils. Ultimately, me surviving and genuinely enjoying my college experience will require calibrating my perspectives: and the problem with part of my current line of thinking is that it’s all relative.

I’ve had the problem of oft comparing myself to others. It’s a habit that I’m trying to break, and a habit I felt like I broke over this past summer. Nonetheless, being on a campus where the person right next to you might be “better” is a hard thing to fathom. It’s a hard pill to swallow, and when you couple the feeling with something like sleep deprivation, it makes it even tougher.

I need to learn that first and foremost, every one of us is in process. We all are working on our own things, and we are at different steps in our journey. It’s funny that my professor in CS 103 just taught us about imposter syndrome the other, yet I still need to find the space to write this, but I think this concept only gets more important as time passes and as you learn just how brilliant everyone else is around you.

I also need to make sure that I am intrinsically motivated. It’s good to use other people understanding content better as motivation. However, you shouldn’t use that motivation as a means of trying to “beat” the person next to you — just like how college eliminates all social “hierarchies,” so, too, does it break down the expectation of competition. This isn’t HS, where everyone is vying to go to an Ivy League School. Everyone’s goals after graduation are different, so the motivation should stem from pushing yourself to do better and seeing how far you can stretch your limits.

Lastly, I think it’s important to not use an individual data point to extrapolate and make conclusions. First and foremost, it’s just terrible data science work. Second of all, a singular data point will *never* describe the entire picture. While I’ve been learning the cycle of this feeling throughout a week, I think there’s also value to learning how everything works within a day, as well. Periods within days will have their own shares of highs and lows, and one part/piece should not dictate how the rest of it goes.